Tuesday, November 29, 2022

In my dream I made up the word "Lonelicaust"

 Last night I had a dream I was back visiting my old college. Mostly I was visiting with Rob Thyberg and his fraternity was having a reunion and I wanted to visit with my old roommate "Kyle the Salmon." I was also curious if the sociology and "woke" humor the young men endorsed affected their politics 20 years later. 

But that isn't the story I want to tell.

My dream began with me and my friend Mocha playing catch outside. When we took a rest, I found a book that was quite large and started looking through it. It was old newspaper articles and a memory book. I found a note in a child's handwriting tucked away. It was on faded paper, and was just a corner of a page, but written on it was "I love you" and it was signed by some boy's name.

I asked Mocha about it and they were like "that was my first love letter" and proceeded to open the memory book to the back, where there was an entire page, engraved in gold, where someone had written a note to Mocha. It wasn't the little boy, it was their mother. The mother had this whole thank you note to Mocha about how their kindness to their son was a big f-ing deal because the young man didn't have many friends. Somewhere in the note the mother used the term "Lonelicaust" to describe how children who have too much structured play never learn how to connect with other people and become terrible parents. Kids are being destroyed on a mass scale due to loneliness. The little boy had passed the note to Mocha and so it went in the memory book, even though it wasn't the note Mocha wanted. It was just a sweet memory of two sweet children.

Kyle the Salmon was great, and Rob and I talked about the marriage pact we made when we were in our 20s, and we discussed where to buy land for the commune and how many people we needed to "buy in" to get it going, just like we did 20 years ago on the porch at Mocha Maddness. 

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